


A Terrible Beauty

by omphalos



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Dark, F/M, Magic, POV First Person, Twisted
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-06
Updated: 2009-12-06
Packaged: 2017-10-04 05:15:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/omphalos/pseuds/omphalos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For Ethan, Drusilla is Chaos incarnate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Terrible Beauty

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from 'Easter, 1916', a poem by Yeats, which Ethan obliquely refers to at one point as well.

_"O Kali, my mother full of bliss! Enchantress of the almighty Shiva!  
In Thy delirious joy Thou dancest, clapping Thy hands together!  
Thou art the Mover of all that move, and we are but Thy helpless toys."_  
– Ramakrishna Paramhans

I was caught from the first moment I saw her, caught like a shark pulled unresisting by the Lorelei-hook of blood in the water, oblivious or uncaring of the alien metal bars and those strange black fish with their spilt tails and single large eyes.

They don't have much in the way of brains, sharks, and neither do bored, aimless Chaos mages, so it seems, at least when Christmas comes unexpectedly to downtown Rio at three A.M. on a restless August night. This was a year ago now, a year ago and a murder away, and the blissful synchronicity of our meeting is enough to warm this loyal chaote's cockles even now.

She was dancing by herself in a children's play area near the beach. Moonlight was slick as oil on her black hair, and stars -- yes, _stars_ \-- shone in her eyes. She made that cliche real, gave it, well, if not life, flesh at the very least. I was the snake charmed, the sailor wrecked on the rocks, helpless in her music and loving it.

She wore satin -- a long black slip with discreet lace and side-slits -- and leather: heavy, DM-style boots. A feather boa coiled loosely around her neck. She was dressed for sensuality, dressed without care or knowledge of 'appropriate attire'. There were no lines from underwear beneath the slick satin, and my imagination helpfully provided an image of my hand slipping through the split in the fabric, my fingers pressing into moistness.

My cock, ever obliging, responded. I rarely neglect it, and so it doesn't hesitate to demand. It's a spoilt brat of a thing, and it's easier just to give it what it wants when I can.

There was a child on the roundabout, sitting propped up, but drooping like a rag doll. I glanced at it twice before I realised what I saw, distracted as I was by my dancing goddess. _Maha Kali_ she was that night -- the Black One. I was to become her greatest _bhakta_.

Well, for a little while, at least.

I crouched by the roundabout and lifted the small boy's head by the hair. Gently -- I'm not a carelessly cruel man. I consider my every act of malice before the performance, I assure you.

He wore pyjamas as if stolen from his bed, and someone had drawn broadly smiling lipstick around the lad's mouth -- crimson, sticky lipstick, dark against the clown-white of his skin. I checked for life, but of course, there was none. My fingers came back from his neck bloody.

Good thing, it was, the brat being dead. I hate mercy killing. Makes me feel like Ripper, and that'll never do. It would've been fair warning though, had the fates any sense of fairness. But they like us blind too much, the old bastards. I say that with fondness, you understand.

She noticed me finally as I straightened up, and she drifted over like a lost spirit hungry for warmth. And wasn't that exactly what she was? Ah no, she was, of course, far more than that, my ravager of worlds.

"Hello," she said, tipping her head to one side like a crow would, studying me with large eyes as dark as my own. "I saw you before… in a picture."

"Did you, sweet thing?" I asked, my lips curling irrepressibly in amusement and something more than that: desire, delight… delirium maybe. "What was I doing?"

"Making everything different," she told me. "Pancake Day came late. You tossed them all in the air and gave them sugar and lemons."

I'm not sure even now why I was so unafraid. Oh yes, I court danger and always have. Fear does wonders for arousal, I've found. Well, _my_ arousal, anyway. Pain too -- Ripper always said I was wired wrong. But standing so close to this beautiful, undead predator, I knew no fear at all, just a sense of almost precognitive rightness and desire.

You see, I could sense the Chaos writhing within her, a toxic kundalini curled around her spine making her dance, mind and body.

She'd spoken with an English accent that owed more to Hepburn's Eliza D. than any London street I'd ever walked down. Surreal and musical it was, and I needed to hear more of it. I considered the riddle she'd given me. Pancake Day was Shrove Tuesday in the British calendar and the feast day before Lent, which was Mardis Gras time in Rio. I did a little Chaos-maths in my head. "Was this in the late, unlamented Sunnydale, by any chance? Around Halloween time?"

She placed one hand flat on her belly and fish-wriggled the other in front of her own face as her hips moved to a slow rhythm I could almost hear myself. "Bad Slayer spoilt everything. Now she glares at me from all the little girls' eyes, like the Virgin Mary." My goddess lifted her bony hand and stroked it down my cheek. Her nails -- no, her talons -- were square cut and carefully polished black and red. "I only like boys now."

"Lucky old me," I said jauntily, capturing her hand and pressing the tip of my tongue inside one of the claws. I tasted blood and grinned at her. "I used to feel that way myself."

"The wheels turned." Her eyes rolled upwards, and she swayed, but I didn't let go of her hand. "London Bridge fell down, and the mooring rope frayed away." Her gaze returned to my own. "You thought it never would, but it did. Poor little boys."

"Not so poor, princess. Freedom came at a price, but I'm far from broke."

"Not broken, like the clock. Tick, tick, tick, always ticking." She smiled briefly, wanly. "But not for me."

I knew then that I would love her. Maybe not as deeply as I had my Ripper, and maybe not for as long, but things were stirring in that rancid piece of old meat I called my heart, things I thought lost since the deals I'd had to make to escape my recent unpleasant spell in prison. My imagination was captured by her and made pliant, and my ambition? Well, it was pretty hard and proud already.

"What's your name, sweetheart?" I asked her, almost gently.

She moaned and snatched her hand back, lifting her raven-wing hair in rough handfuls and letting it drop again over her nearly bare shoulders. "I was the Queen of Cups."

"Past tense?" I inquired politely.

She put a hand to the small of my back and jerked me sharply forward. Even in that brief gesture, I could feel her preternatural strength. She was old, this one. Old, powerful, and divinely mad, I couldn't quite believe my luck. Was she my reward for finally letting go of you-know-who?

Her sharp body pressed into me, and she thrust her hips, twice. "Jack fell down and broke his crown."

"Oh dear. That _is_ a shame. So who are you now, delicious one?"

"Drusilla," she sing-songed. "All on her ownsome. Never 'Dru' no more. My daddy ate nuns, you know."

"Did he? How very… patient of him." I knew who she was now, knew who her 'daddy' was too. "My name's Ethan, Drusilla. Can you say 'Ethan'?"

She pulled back immediately, looking cross with me. I learnt quickly never to talk down to her, no matter how childish she sometimes seemed. She had a pout that could wreck fleets and bring titans to their knees.

"Rain, rain, go away," she said sulkily.

"And not come again another day?" Impulsively, I dropped to one knee. "I'm sorry, sweet Drusilla. Forgive my arrogant presumption. I am your humblest of servants, I assure you."

"Daddy ate the servants, too, and Auntie Mabel; she repeated on him for a whole day." She spun around from me and began again her silent dance, a waltz with princely ghosts.

I was forgotten and that would never do, but perhaps I was also forgiven. I rose and claimed myself a swing seat, lazily penduluming as I watched her. When her unseen orchestra danced her close to me again, I asked, "Are you lonely, Queen Drusilla?"

She stopped, her back to me. "Not a queen. Told you that."

"But you are. You're _my_ queen. I recognised that as soon as I saw you, my precious, evil, succulent majesty." I drew out the words, enjoying them.

"You're laughing at me." She sounded uncertain.

"Oh, I can assure you, I'm not." I rose and walked up behind her, daring to slip my arms around her waist and feeling drunk on her proximity. It was like holding my whole religion in my hands. "I'm quite deadly serious. You and I, my queen, live outside those places of the motley-wearers."

"You're a fool," she said very clearly, and I laughed aloud, pressing myself into her pert little behind.

"You're my Eris-Discordia, my goddess incarnate." I pushed my hands in tandem, flat down her belly to the tops of her thighs. "Won't you let me worship you?" I blew warm breath up the length of her long neck. "Won't you let me make you happy?"

"Your words are snakes; they hiss and poison." Nonetheless, she pressed her bum back against me and rubbed, making me groan with my desire for her.

"But you like snakes, my dear." I knew that, somehow.

"I'll never be hungry again," she said dreamily, and although that worried me a little, it wasn't for the right reasons as things turned out.

"I'm much more than food, my queen. Can't you see that?" I kneaded her inner thighs through the fabric of her slip, and she made a delicious mew of a sound. "But I'll make sure you don't go without."

"Oh! You're the wicked uncle, and I'm the lamp."

I chuckled. "In that case," I said, taking the satin of her slip into my hands and gathering it upwards, "I better hurry up and start rubbing."

As I'd suspected, there was nothing below the slip but cool soft skin. Holding the cloth in one hand, I moved two fingers of the other until they sat within ever so slightly damp curls. She trilled and pushed her hips forwards, tipping her pelvis up hungrily.

"The boy is in the chimney," she said, sounding a little distressed. "And he won't get out."

"I'll get him out for you, my queen. Never you worry." I pressed my trouser-trapped cock between the cheeks of her arse, thrusting and pushing her forward onto my fingers. They slipped between her outer lips, and she shivered in my arms.

"But he's caught, and he's scared and ever so lonely."

"Trust me," I purred into her ear, her night-scented hair catching on my lips as I spoke. I moved my fingertips over her clitoris. "He won't be there long."

"Oh. Ooh!"

It's a lie that vampires don't breathe. They don't _respire_; they don't need oxygen, but they do breathe. The instinct is too hard for them to stop it without concentration. Drusilla was panting now, her head tipped back onto my shoulder as I played her nerve-endings skilfully. I've always been rather good at sex, you see, no matter the gender of my partner.

"He's caught!" she said again. "He's crying, can't you hear him? Poor little mite, he's a mouse in a trap. Oh, I want him! I want him so, Ethan. Give him to me?"

She'd said my name. I felt my cock harden painfully in response and so, made rash with lust, I pulled her back across the grass. Perching on the centre of the low seesaw, I placed a hand on each slim thigh and persuaded her legs to separate as I sat her down, astride and leaning back against me.

"_Incende digitum, scintillate et excite_," I muttered silently as I pressed my fingers far inside her. She wailed and moaned as the cantrip did its trick, magic sparkling like mystic sherbet deep within her body. Ripper had liked that one too, but I never had taught it to him, no matter how 'nicely' he'd asked.

She was writhing over me now in a way that made me grunt, made me gasp for breath as if emerging from water. "Do you like my worship, my queen?" I asked huskily. "Does it please you?"

"Snake-words!" she cried out shrilly, and I was glad for the lateness of the hour. The last thing I wanted now was an interruption, and I was too distracted by far to cast an effective ward. "Snake tongue should taste silence."

Hoping I'd translated that correctly, I lifted her again and stood, turning us both and pushing her down to sit in my place. "Yes," I said soothingly. "Let's put this nasty tongue of mine to better use, shall we?" I pushed her slip back up her legs again and dropped to my knees between them.

She tasted like Chaos, like the bitter blood on my lips at the apex of ritual, like victory and torment and holy suicide all in one skin-and-bones package.

Or maybe I'm waxing overly romantic. Maybe she just tasted of musk and dead flesh, but that would be rather dull, wouldn't it? And I hate dull. Dull is what Ripper chose over me, but Drusilla didn't. I'd have to love her for that if nothing else, but as things worked out, there was a lot more 'else', more than even I could handle. Hard to believe, that, isn't it?

But the one thing my dark queen never, ever was, was dull.

So I drank from the fount of my goddess until she shook and screamed and berated countless unseen people and threatened to crush my head with her strong thighs. And even as I wondered if my skull would crack, I was smiling against her sex. I had purpose again, and I had a promise of glorious anarchy.

I took her on the roundabout. Fucking her was like wanking in the holy water font, like using a rosary for anal beads. I was high as Mary Poppins' kite, and I couldn't resist one mental 'take that, Ripper', but that was the last time I thought of him at all for a long time.

Until now in fact, this very moment, as I walk down the empty Swains Lane, heading for the tube, and I'm wondering if he'd get the joke. It's very funny, you see. You _will_ see.

So Drusilla laid her head in the lap of her young leavings and was obliging enough to cry my name just before she came for a second time and I for my first. I bit into her breast and wrote my name in her blood on her belly. "Just so you won't forget your number one fan," I told her as my spell took effect.

She giggled and sighed and sang a song about horses… or maybe it was about women needing masterful lovers; it was often hard to tell these things.

I took her home. First to my hotel room in Rio, then to LA, and finally back to London, land of both our births, and I couldn't stop smiling all the while. She was a gift from my gods; she was indeed my goddess, pliant in my arms and generous with her favours. I was Midas, rich beyond my dreams, and I hadn't yet realised what a curse that could be. Not that it would have mattered. I look back over the last year, and I'm still smiling. Curse or no curse, that's the best twelve months of my nasty little life now come to an end.

I'll never forget her face the first time I let her taste me. My blood is tainted, you see, an inevitable side effect of my vocation. It acted like LSD on her, and considering how far from the mundane world her reality was normally… Well, I'm sure you can imagine. I worshipped her with every part of me: hands, cock, tongue and heart. I made her the focus for my rituals and channelled the sweetest of Chaos through her into the world. She strode through London like a colossus, rending her way bloody through the populace and making all the silly little policemen run around like fretful ants.

I've never been so happy. Truly.

Her mind was my Book of Changes, her body my playground, and her blood… her blood… ah, well. All good things, as they say, and really, I should have known better than to use her blood in high ritual.

But when, really, do I ever listen to sense?

So last night, I took her to Highgate, dressed her in white muslin, and fucked her at the point of midnight spread-eagled over Karl Marx's grave -- no good reason for that; it just seemed like a fun place to do it. Then I laid out my stuff, cast the circle, and cut her wrist, bleeding her into a chalice of jet ready-filled with the requisite herbs and powders. She giggled and wriggled and called me 'naughty boy', 'Andy Pandy' and 'Judas Iscariot'.

God, I'm missing her already.

I scooped our mingled juices from her sex and stirred my fingers into the blood, calling on Eris, on Kali, Anat, Tiamat and Morrighan, on every dark, destroying goddess ever named as such, and I channelled them not through her, but _into_ her as I poured the blood slowly over her prone form.

She writhed as the scarlet spread through the white muslin, crooning and talking of banquets and ballet, a sugarplum the signpost between the tangents. I told her she was _my_ sugarplum, dark and sweet, bursting with liquor, and she laughed. Her eyes were black holes, sucking all the illumination from the night.

"You are my Shiva," she said in an accentless voice that wasn't hers, and I knew then, suddenly, that I'd at last gone too far. I nearly climaxed in my fear and delight. Fifty years it's taken me to reach my limits. I'd thought I didn't have any, thought that nothing would ever sate me, nothing would ever be enough, but I was wrong.

She rose above me, standing on me with the weight of universes, and she was glorious. She took me on the grass there, stealing my breath and semen both in a coupling I know will visit my nightmares for years to come. Then she rose into the air, six arms snaking in that silent dance that even now she moved to, and a pack of ghostly hounds milled around her, baying at the sliver of new moon.

I watched from below and knew I had never seen anything more beautiful or more terrible, knew that I would never want or love anything more than I did my goddess at that moment. Ah, to be her Shiva, to be the god who wields the Kali, destroying the world in order to remake it. For a moment, I savoured that deliciousness, rubbing my hand against my poor over-used cock.

I closed my eyes and murmured, "I am the Lord of the Dance," and willed myself to believe it.

But I, it seems, am not so far gone to believe I'm a god, and when, having surveyed her territory enough, she returned to earth to tell me, "we will start with this city; it is rich with impure souls," I was ready.

Ah, my poor dark queen. I _am_ sorry. Truly, I am. I couldn't wait and see, I'm afraid. It had to be then, before they wedded with you too firmly to disperse with a well-aimed stake.

Now, as I walk down into the Archway tube station, a beggar grunts a plea at me. Feeling generous and cruel both, I reach into my bag and hand him the jet chalice. My hands, I note with distaste under the fluorescent lights, are still covered in Drusilla's grey ash.

"Whattafuckizzis?" the poor bastard asks, holding the chalice as if it might explode.

"The holy grail, mate," I tell him with a grin. "Keep it safe, won't you? Whatever you do, don't add water."

Laughing, I head for the escalators, going down.

**Author's Note:**

> Written somewhere around 2004. Thanks to mpoetess for the read-through!


End file.
